GCD – Global Understanding

A global citizen actively seeks a personal understanding of how life in different countries varies relative to the interaction between power/privilege and economics, ethics, politics, religion, and/or the environment.

During my time in YIS, I had the opportunity to participate in various Model United Nations activities as a regular member. Through Grade 9 ~ 12, I have built up my global understanding and knowledge of global issues and concerns as well as the impacts to communities and the environment. The basis of each MUN debate was to formally evaluate and explore the modern concerns and issues incited by certain political activities and conflicts. Through each debate, each member would be assigned to a specific country, learn of their stance in the debate, establish new knowledge of their privileges and power over certain communities and aspects of the environment.

On November 25th of 2017, I attended the KMUN conference in K international school as the delegate of Nepal. There, I represented Nepal and acted accordingly to their government’s mindset. Throughout the conference (and even before the conference, when I was researching), I demonstrated my capability to imitate a representative of a nation and engage with global issues with fellow delegates. This demonstrated my knowledge of global conflicts and issues and allowed me to level with other delegates regarding the consequences of certain choices as well as negotiate the demands while considering the ethics it may involve. For example, I had to act in favour of Nepal regarding Mars exploration and global disarmament, which required intense research on their stance (in which Nepal was supportive of both the Mars exploration and global disarmament), explain what Nepal can do within its powers, and evaluate how such decision would affect the community of Nepal and the environment surrounding the nation.

To further evaluate, Nepal’s stance on the Mars exploration project was rather surprising from my perspective. While I had originally believed Nepal to have no significant interest nor power to contribute in the Mars exploration programme as it had been widely recognised as a currently developing low income country, research regarding their stance showed otherwise. I had discovered that Nepal, despite lacking significant funds to provide any financial support for the project, was in great interest for the colonisation of Mars, with governmental institutes established to support space related research. This had greatly expanded my Global Understanding, especially on Nepal, where I had realised that despite the perceived stance of Nepal, they were in great interest for the Mars exploration and was willing to support the project in any way possible (except financial).

Additionally, when there were no external conferences, delegates were expected to write up position papers and resolutions in practice for future conferences as well as practising our public speaking skills. I have written position papers for the topics of AIDS, gaming, and human rights, all of which I presented to the fellow delegates. I have also cooperated with other delegates in order to write up a resolution for capital punishment as the delegate of North Korea. All of such practice involved research into the respective topics and the judgement of the power of the nation/country and how their decision would affect the global issue at hand.

Therefore, through MUN and the various practice activities carried out, I believe I have demonstrated strong skills in Global Understanding, by researching global issues from the perspective of a certain country with varying levels of power, evaluate the pros and cons for that decision for the regional and global community and debate with fellow delegates with different perspectives to further build up a global understandings of political and social issues around the world.